A little bit like The Sims but set in the Jurassic period, with a little bit of Age of Empires thrown into the mix, Ark: Survival Evolved is a new take on the survival game genre. Build alliances, go to war with other tribes, tame dinosaurs, and learn how to survive in an inhospitable prehistoric landscape, teeming with terrifying creatures waiting to rip you apart. Have you got what it takes to survive?

There’s lots to love about this game – it has wide appeal, with something that everyone should enjoy.

Early Access-orama

Now, this game is still in early access, so it’s not totally polished yet. From day one, there’s been a few glitches and a number of teething issues. But that’s ok – we expect that with an early access game – it’s one of the most crucial points of early access. So, for us here at DingIt, we don’t mind a few dramas over our dino stew. However, what makes Ark: Survival Evolved really standout is the sheer number of patches and updates the devs send out to fix any issues that players report. The devs also often roll out regular updates to introduce new areas, new dinosaurs, and new features. They literally do as much as humanly possible to ensure the game reaches its full potential. We greatly admire their apparent dedication and enthusiasm!

Game Modes

When you’re just starting out, or if you prefer lone game-play, your best option is to play local. In this mode, there’s no other players and you have a huge range of customization options, including the number of available dinos, your resistance to damage, the length of daylight and loads of other stuff. You also have the option of hosting a game locally, so you can invite your friends and play with just a few of you, whether together or competitively. This is a great choice if you want to avoid highly populated main game servers or if you want to organize an Ark event.

The main game servers are pretty much free-for-alls. You don’t just have the dinos to worry about – you have all the other players to concern yourself with. Like most open world games, there’s a huge range of players. Some will give help to noobs or at least leave them alone for a while. Others are not so accommodating and will quickly kill you and loot your belongings. This is particularly problematic in Ark as, until you have a home base, belong to a tribe, or have a bed, you respawn in a random location, which can place you firmly in the middle of another tribe’s land. And, when you respawn, you lose everything, including weapons and clothes, so you’re pretty much butt-naked (apart from modest underwear), and totally helpless in a random location, potentially surrounded by 100 blood-thirsty dinos or aggressive players. So – our advice – join a tribe or start one of your own asap – and craft a bed as fast as you can – once you’ve unlocked that particular engram.

Taming

Taming dinos is an integral part of the game. Now you can of course just run away from dinos or, once you’re strong enough and have the right weapons, you can spend all of your time simply hacking them to pieces. But you’ll be missing one of the most fundamental and fun parts of the game. We recommend starting out small – something like a dodo – as this gives you a feel for the taming process. Hitting them with your fists or a pick, spear, or axe will likely result in you killing them, but for taming, you want to start with the slingshot and some rocks. Aim for the head to knock them out as fast as possible without overly reducing their health. Once the animal is unconscious, open its inventory and add berries (for herbivores). Some berries are more popular than others, so keep an eye on which ones your dino is eating. Carnivores obviously require meat – preferably raw – although some species prefer spoiled meat. To get meat, you’ll need to kill a few dinos and hack apart their bodies to harvest the flesh. When taming carnivores, the same principles apply – just switch berries for meat. Remember to keep an eye on the taming progress bar. If it looks like the dino is going to wake up before it’s fully tame, use your slingshot and hit it in the head – but watch the health bar, as you can easily kill an unconscious dino – so only hit it if you really need to.

Once you’ve tamed your dino, you can make it follow you, allow it to wander, disable wandering, make it stand still and not follow, and alter the aggression level. Use your tame dinos to carry your inventory, as they’ll still have it after you respawn. They can also help you kill big bad-ass dinos – but beware – they aren’t invincible – so big dinos can rip your domesticated companions apart as fast as they can kill you. Once you’re up to taming larger dinosaurs, you can learn the appropriate engram and craft saddles so you can ride. This gives you more control when going into battle and, in some cases, lets you run move faster and safer. Collect their poop, too, as this will come in handy for use as fertilizer – or even fire fuel when in a pinch.

Overall

Ark: Survival Evolved is a new breed of survival game that encompasses a huge range of gameplay elements that keeps the game fast-paced and interesting. With multiple game modes and so much to do in-game, it will appeal to most. The random respawns are problematic for new players on the open world maps, but once you level up and really learn how to play, this is no longer such an issue. If you’ve started out playing locally, you can even import your current character into the open world game so you can get a definite head start.

So go on, dive in. This game has come a huge way forward in a short space of time – and it looks like it’s only going to get better. Come and join the fun – and send us your game pics! We want to see just how many dinos you’ve managed to tame! Or send us images of your best PvP or PvD battles – or your thriving tribe or homestead, complete with crop plots, dinos, elaborate buildings, and irrigation systems. Go ahead and “wow” us!

The Elder Scrolls Online is brimming with awesomeness – and fantastical adventure awaits. But, if you’re new to MMOs or to the Elder Scrolls, whether on console or PC, it can be a daunting place. So, here’s a list of tips to help point you in the right direction, helping you have a more enjoyable experience as you explore the mythical world.

1. Race

Right off the bat, choosing your race and class correctly is essential. Your race determines your PvP allegiances and your starting area. Additionally, the bonuses you can earn throughout the game are determined by your race. They are specific to your race, and, once you’ve chosen, you cannot change your mind, unless you start all over again. The bonuses determined by your race are also generally better suited to specific classes. So, if you know that you favor a particular character class, think even more carefully about your race before you decide.

The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited_20150609192145

2. Class

After choosing your race, you have to decide on a class. Now, unlike traditional MMOs, the Elder Scrolls Online gives you far more freedom with classes. While yes, different classes have different skill sets and specialisms, you can work on these and a variety of skill subsets as you improve your character, and you’re not restricted to specific types of armor or weapons, either. You have four classes to choose from:

Sorcerer – adept wielders of natural magic, sorcerers use the weather as a weapon.

Nightblade – somewhere between a sneak thief and an assassin, the nightblade uses stealth and cunning, as well as blades.

Templar – the versatile all-rounder, the Templar fearlessly defends the innocent and stands stalwart against the powers of darkness, calling upon the power of light and the sun to protect himself and others, and to strike down his enemies.

3. Join a Guild

While you can have a blast by going it alone, like with the other Elder Scrolls games, but joining a guild adds a hole new aspect to the game. There’s two types of guilds – the AI guilds, which open up new quests, skills, and special bonuses, and player-made guilds. The player-made guild provides a persistent social circle, which makes it easy to stay in touch with team mates, and allows you to complete quests together. This is particularly important with some of the really tough quests – as you really do need a few team mates to help you out – even if it’s just as dragon-fodder! You’ll be able to deposit and withdraw gold and items from the guild bank, too, depending on how your guild leader sets the permissions. You can get a list of active guilds here.

4. Get the Best Horse You Can Afford – and Upgrade him!

Wayshrines are all fine and dandy – and yes, they do speed up travel time – but this is Elder Scrolls – so you’re going to spend a lot of time covering great distances the old fashioned way. Now, there’s nothing really wrong with walking on your own two feet, as long as that’s how you enjoy playing the game – spending hours in the wilderness, collecting berries and plants and meeting the occasional enemy. However, what you really need is a good steed, which greatly reduces travel time, but still lets you explore your surroundings at will, Our advice would be to get the best horse you can afford, as soon as you can, but bear in mind that horses are an expensive commodity. Also, just spending 20,000 gold pieces on a top-of-the-line horse isn’t a guarantee that you’ve got the best horse in the realm. However much you spend, you should collect and feed apples to boost his speed, give him hay to improve his stamina and, give him oats to maximize how much weight you can carry while you ride.

5. Maximize Your Inventory

This is a crucial one that’s often overlooked. Given how far you travel between destinations and how important crafting and collecting are to the Elder Scrolls Online, you need to increase your inventory space as fast as possible. Additional slots can be costly, but being forced to drop essential items hurts you more in the long run. And, with increased inventory space, you can carry more, so you can craft more and sell more, so the additional space pays for itself quickly.

6. Collect, Loot, and Pillage

Grab anything and everything. Crafting is essential for success in Tamriel, and the best way to master it is to collect anything you find. Loot corpses, rifle through barrels and chests, collect ore and flowers while out on your travels. You can trade or sell whatever you find or combine items to craft objects you can sell for more than the individual components are worth. It’s a great way to land yourself plenty of extra gold, which is hard to come by in Tamriel, particularly when you first start. Plus, you never know what you’ll need, so keep yourself well stocked.

7. Learn the Battle System

Just repeatedly punching your oponent or firing a single spell over and over just won’t cut the mustard in this MMO. It’ll to work, to a point, on low level foes, but it really isn’t all that fun, it only works on some of the lowest level bad guys, and eventually, if you only play using this strategy, you’ll quickly come to a grinding, frustrating halt. What you need to do as quickly as possible is to learn the intricacies of the combat system. Learn how to select the right spells or special abilities on your hotbar. Find out how to block and when best to do it and make use of dodge and interrupt, too.

8. Try PvP

Now, you can’t access PvP until you reach level 10, when the territory of Cyrodill opens. Then you can jump in and test your mettle against other players. Now, while it’s advisable to get in there as soon as you’re able, we really should mention that if you dash in there as soon as you reach level 10, you’re going to struggle – and probably get some humiliating defeats! However, if you can persevere – or perhaps gain a few extra levels before you enter, the skills and experience gains are well worth it.

9. Group Dungeons

Heading to the dungeons is a fabulous way to gain valuable experience and to meet and network with other players. You may even find yourself with an invitation to an alliance – or perhaps you’ll start one of your own, and offer invitations to some of the players you meet in the dungeons. To get a feel for dungeons, you can explore the introductory ones found in each alliance’s starting area.

So – there’s a few basic but crucial tips that will set you in good stead to conquer the world of Tamriel. What do you think? What have we missed? Do you have any of your own tips to share? Let us know!

Ark: Survival Evolved – a new breed of survival game – with dinosaurs. Not just rampaging bloodthirsty beasts that you simply beat to death (or get eaten by). Sure, you can kill – or at least try to kill – every dinosaur that crosses your path – but that’s not what makes this game stand out. You can tame the dinosaurs – and, depending on their size, you can fit them with a saddle and ride them.

At the moment, Ark: Survival Evolved is still in early access – so there’s still a few issues – but the devs are awesome and seem to work on issues as soon as they are reported. These guys are also adding stacks of new features on a regular basis, so the game is still evolving.

To help you out, we’ve come up with a list of top tips to help you succeed, based on many, many hours of gameplay, trial and error (lots of errors), and our overall experience with the game as it stands so far!

1. Use Local Mode

Leaping onto the main game servers is all well and good – but it’s fraught with danger, and can be a frustrating experience if you’re new to the game. There’s no beginner protection, and if you really don’t have a good idea of what you’re doing, you’ll die repeatedly, respawn in a random location, and have to start from scratch each time, because when you respawn, you lose everything in your inventory and anything you had equipped, including your clothes. If you happen to respawn in another player’s or tribe’s territory, there’s a good chance they’ll hack you to pieces and you’ll die again. So, until you find your feet, we recommend starting in local mode. You can even host your own game and invite friends.

Playing local allows you to manipulate the game settings, including boosting the number of dinosaurs, altering the length of day time/night time, and the amount of damage you deliver. We prefer to set the number of dinos high, so we can always find plenty of dinos, although this creates its own issues, particularly if you’re still at a low level. In local mode, there’s just you and the dinos, so it gives you the chance to really get stuck in and get a feel for the game and what strategies and techniques work best for you.

If you want to play with your friends, you can locally host a map, too. This gives you more of the social experience while avoiding savage strangers. Although, you can still go all savage on your friends and compete in tribes for dominion over the map.

2. Harvest. A Lot

Harvesting is crucial. You need to harvest as many resources as possible to excel in Ark. There’s plenty of different resources available, and eventually, you’ll need them all. They are the building blocks for your craftables, or engrams. When you spawn (or respawn), you’ll have nothing apart from your bare hands, so you need to gather some stone, thatch, and fiber asap to build yourself a pick. Beware – pummeling trees to get wood and thatch does have a certain barbaric appeal – and is necessary to begin with – but it lowers your health, and you can actually kill yourself hitting trees if you’re too enthusiastic. So, as soon as you can, build your pick, then use that to hit stuff with. Harvest, harvest, harvest!

3. Pick Up Poop!

Yep, that’s right! In Ark, you poop! So do the dinos. Yes, it’s amusing to throw it at your friends, at enemies, at dinos – but its real value is as fertilizer for crops later in the game, so make sure you gather at least some of the poop you come across!

4. Build a Campfire and a Torch

You start the game with a few engrams (crafting plans), including a campfire and a torch. Build these as soon as you can. You need to stay warm at night, so a campfire is perfect. It also obviously provides light. Find a suitable place, a little tucked away to avoid carnivorous dinosaurs, and place your fire. Fill it with fuel, light it, and bingo! You’ve got heat and light. A torch allows you to move around in the dark easily and provides a little warmth. To make the most of your nighttime, light the equip your torch and run around collecting berries, stone, and fiber.

5. Choose Your Base Carefully

Choosing your base location carefully is essential to success. If you’re playing on local mode, you only have to worry about the dinosaurs, but if you’re playing against friends in host mode or on the open servers, you have to worry about all the other players, too. Regardless of which mode you’re playing, the principles are the same – try to choose a defensible position – like up against a cliff face, or tucked into a recess. Also, use your common sense, if the area is swamped with predators, move somewhere else to build your base. On the open servers, many tribes don’t appreciate strangers setting up camp within their territory, so make sure there’s not a tribe base near you. Or, if you really, really want to build a base, ask a member of the tribe, or even as the tribe if they’ll accept you as a member.

6. Craft Some Clothes

You start pretty much naked, but somehow your underwear survives. However, it doesn’t offer any protection, other than for your modesty, so you should gather fiber and craft cloth shirt, pants, boots, hat, and gloves as soon as possible. While these items don’t really give you any protection against marauding dinosaurs, they’ll stop you overheating or getting hypothermia as quickly, so they’re definitely worthwhile.

7. Pick Your Engrams With Care

Each time you level up, you receive engram points. Engrams are your crafting blueprints, and encompass everything from cooking items and clothing to weapons and structures. Choose which ones to unlock with care. Consider what is most useful to you, rather than just choosing “cool” items right off the bat. Painted signs and standing torches look great, but they’re not as vital as building foundations. Likewise, there’s not much point in crafting a t-rex saddle if you’re nowhere near ready to tame a bloodthirsty t-rex!

8. Build a Bed ASAP

Once you’ve got at least a building foundation, build yourself a bed! If you have placed a bed, when you die, you can choose to respawn right back at the bed, so it’s a smart move, as randomly respawning all over the map is frustrating, to say the least.

9. Craft a Spear

Crafting a spear is a sure fire way to have fun killing dinosaurs. It’s more resilient and more accurate than either the hatchet or the pick. If you can, make several, as they do break, and you don’t want to be doing battle with a dino without a decent weapon! Spears are for killing rather than knocking out, but they are the best weapons at your disposal early in the game. You can then kill dinos and harvest hide to make yourself a slingshot, to knock out the dinos and tame them. Hide is also a necessity for better clothing, better weapons, and a range of other engrams. So build a spear and get killing!

10. Pick Dinosaurs Suited to Your Weapons and Skill Level

This should be obvious – but we’ve seen an awful lot of low-level players – levels 1 to 5, for examples, trying to tackle level 50+ dinosaurs with nothing more than a hatchet. That’s really not the smartest move, and is one of the fastest ways to die! So, make sure you check the level of the beast before you attack it, and only go in for the kill if it’s of a similar level to yourself.

11. Craft a Slingshot

Early in the game, the slingshot is the best chance you have of knocking out a creature, rather than killing it. It does require some hide, though, so you’ll have to kill a few dinosaurs before you can use it. Don’t forget to stock up on plenty of rocks to use with it, too, otherwise the dino you’re trying to tame will run away or come and kill you while you’re gathering extra stone.

12. Tame When Possible

Killing dinos in Ark: Survival Evolved is great fun for lots of players, and a necessity for all, but, when possible, tame them. If you don’t need the hide or the meat and the dinosaurs are happily minding their own business, knock them out and tame them, rather than hacking them to death. Why? Because you can USE them! Plus, you can give them awesome names. Who doesn’t want a whole clan of dinos named after their favorite Harry Potter characters?!? Or an army of bloodthirsty sabre-tooth tigers (or dodos) named after the direwolves from Game of Thrones?!?

13. Make Use of Your Dinosaurs

There’s no doubt about it, tame dinos are incredibly useful. You can ride them and make use of their inventory to store stuff. You can use them as an army – even the more docile ones. Take your dino army and kill other dinos, or attack other tribes and players with your dinosaur horde. Who doesn’t want to ride a dino into battle at the head of a screaming, battle-crazed horde of other dinosaurs?!?

14. Use Storage Boxes

Having to stop and drop stuff while harvesting is plain annoying. Largely because you know that, although you need other items right now, in 15 minutes, you’ll need the stuff you’re having to drop. So, build storage boxes in strategic locations – like at your base – and empty as much stuff into it as you can, so that you’re free to load back up while harvesting and, when you die, you won’t lose everything you’ve built. It’ll be right there waiting for you.

15. Grow Your Own

Certain dinos like certain berries. Some berries are more nutritious than others. Some berries provide more health and others are better for dying armor. So, use the seed plots and grow whichever berries you find yourself most frequently in need of. If you grow a bunch of them at your base location, you’ll significantly cut down foraging time.

16. Experiment

Don’t be afraid to experiment with techniques, strategies, recipes, engrams, taming new dinosaur species, etc. It’s part of the fun that is Ark: Survival Evolved. If you don’t experiment and try new things, the game will quickly become repetitive, and you’ll make very little progress. So go on, live dangerously!

17. Explore

Explore the map. Once you’ve gained a few levels, increase the distance you travel from your base. You’ll discover new things to harvest and new dinos. If you want to travel long distances, build multiple bases, complete with beds, so you’re never too far from safety. Once you’re ready to tackle something more substantial than dilos, dodos, and parasaurs, be sure to head inland to the grassy plains, as this is where you’ll find more of the bigger species and large carnivorous dinosaurs that are just spoiling for a good fight! Jungle biomes are teaming with life. It’s here you’ll find the smallest, fastest creatures on Ark. The beaches are home to a nice mix of critters of varying size, including the slower, more ponderous beasts, many of which are herbivores, so won’t bother you unless you attack them – or steal their eggs. Beware though, there’s still plenty of predators at the beach, including the pesky dilos that temporarily blind you when they attack. And, if you’re brave enough to venture into the water, there’s a fair chance you’ll get ripped to pieces by a megalodon, a pack of pirhanas, or something equally as nasty!